Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (17 page)

“Gifts like that create obligations from the gift receiver,” Ma’am Keaton said, able to read Del’s mind as trivially as always.  “None of the other Arms realize the power in such things, even the ones who received it.”

“Then I am to die?” Del said, realizing Ma’am Keaton had just given her one of her deeper secrets.  Ma’am Keaton had the right to end Del’s life, which she accepted.  She would not fight Ma’am Keaton over the judgment.

Ma’am Keaton shook her head.  “Perhaps you’ve lost too much of your humanity, Del.  I’m telling you this because I’m teaching you more than I teach my other students.  I’m paying off my obligation to you.”

“The quiet pools.”

“Yes.  I find the ones I created in my mind to be very useful.”

Ma’am Keaton didn’t explain what uses she had found for them.  Del expected Ma’am Keaton’s uses to be different than her own.

“So, tell me what happened.”

“Ma’am, Ma’am Bass took a disliking to me in the discussion two days ago.  I anticipated today’s torture session, and so maneuvered the session to happen when you were reachable by telephone and close enough to respond.”

“Huh.”  Ma’am Keaton thought, and paced.  “You saw that by including you in my discussions, you’d find further holes in Bass’s logic, and I’d force you to speak these objections to me in front of Bass, further angering her.  So you took what should’ve been a simple punishment session and goaded Bass into going over the top.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What if I don’t appreciate your arguments, Sokolnik, and torture you for them?”

“That’s your right.”

“And you don’t give that right to Bass, because you don’t respect her.”  Ma’am Keaton paced.  “However, I did give Bass teaching rights, which included the right to punish you, so you were indirectly going against my orders by rebelling against her authority.”

“Ma’am.”

Keaton studied Del.  “You walked a very fine line with this stunt, Del.  Enough so that I see no reason to further punish Bass for what she did to you.  What she did to Student Maynard, though, was far out of line.”

“Ma’am, is Maynard dead?”

“No.  But she
will
die unless someone heals her.  That I’ll leave to you, as your responsibility, and a test of your mettle.”

“I don’t know how, ma’am.”

Ma’am Keaton smiled.  “For one of your talents, it’ll be easy, and will cost almost no juice at all.  Assuming I tell you how Bass did what she did to Maynard.”

“Ma’am?”

“I’ll trade.  You tell me what you did to set Bass off, and I’ll tell you what Bass did.”

Del let the comment sit in her quiet pools, and inspected the statement from all sides.  Ma’am Keaton didn’t need to make such an agreement.  She could have just ordered Del to talk.  Thus, Ma’am Keaton punished Bass indirectly by being lenient to Del, and by doing her minor favors.  Del had no problem accepting such largess.

“I did two things, ma’am.  First, I stated to Ma’am Bass that I was tired of screaming.  After my statement, I let the pain Ma’am Bass caused dissipate in the quiet pools.  Second, I interrupted Bass’s monologue about constraints, and pointed out that Ma’am Bass’s desire to restrict all the Arms from cooperating with other Major Transforms was far more constraining than Ma’am Hancock’s program of being reasonable with those she chooses to be reasonable with, and hostile toward those she chooses to be hostile with.”

Ma’am Keaton smiled, then laughed, and continued laughing for several moments.  Del didn’t join in.

“Del, you need to re-learn your sense of humor,” Ma’am Keaton said, when she finished laughing.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That was a great jab.  Do you see the flaw in your logic, though?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Ma’am Hancock’s plan doesn’t constrain her, but does constrain the rest of us, by setting precedents.”

“Huh.”  Ma’am Keaton cut Del down from the restraints and sewed up what needed sewing up.  “Bass reversed the Arm healing skill and used it as a weapon to harm, in combination with her predator effect.  So, Del, let’s see if you can figure out how to save Maynard.  Assuming you think our fourteen year old student Arm is actually worth saving.”

“Ma’am?”

“I’m not completely convinced that she’s old enough to save.  This isn’t the first mess she’s found herself in.  For one thing, she should have picked up on the fact you ranked her and stopped harassing you without forcing you to humble her.”

“Ma’am, I taught girls of her age for years.  They always behave this way.”

“I’ll leave her to you, then, and place the responsibility on your shoulders.”

Ma’am Keaton stood back as Del slid her ruined body, worm style, through her own gore and feces, until she reached Maynard.  Then Del put her hand on Maynard’s head, and by modulating her own predatory nature, called Maynard back from wherever her mind had gone.  Several minutes later, after Maynard’s heart restarted, she opened her eyes and crawled into Del’s ruined arms, weeping.

This was another gift from Ma’am Keaton.  If Ma’am Keaton had brought Maynard back, the rescue would have created an obligation from Maynard to Ma’am Keaton strong enough to bind the young Arm to Ma’am Keaton for life.  Instead, she gave the obligation as a gift to Del.  In private, later today, Del planned to take Maynard’s tag as part of the obligation.  She would need Maynard to hunt for her, and Maynard, if she was good at anything, was good at hunting.

“You two put yourselves back together and clean up this mess,” Ma’am Keaton said.  “After that, clear out, far out of range.  Arm Bass and I are going to have a little extended discussion.”

Even if Bass’s punishment would be for what the older Arm had done to Maynard, and not herself, Del remained pleased.  She had gambled, and won.

Gail Rickenbach: September 18, 1972

“Did you see this article, Beth?” Gail asked.  They hid out in Beth’s office, Beth taking a break from the responsibilities and distractions of running a Focus household and Gail on an enforced break from her juice pattern practice.  Enforced by Van, Sylvie and Kurt.  At least she didn’t have to listen to Van and Kurt arguing about the significance, or lack thereof, of Chrysanthemum payments to the late Focus Katie Anderson in 1968 and 1969.  Gail hadn’t wanted to stomp her big Focus feet into the argument, but it was clear to her that Wandering Shade
bought
Focus Anderson’s traitorous attack.  He hadn’t rolled her with any form of Crow charisma, or blackmailed her, or extorted her, or used any of the dozen Focus-face-saving methods people standardly attributed to him.  No, he simply waved a roll of twenties at her and bought her off.

Focus Beth Hargrove frowned at Gail, puzzled, a cinnamon roll stuck halfway in her mouth.  Beth was an attractive young woman with bright red curls and freckles across her cheeks, with the athletic good health of a Focus and an altogether winning attitude about life.  Gail loved Beth for the help she had given Gail over the years, and for Beth’s forbearance regarding Gail’s many flaws and foibles.

“What article?” Beth asked, around the cinnamon roll.

“This, right here,” Gail said, pushing the section of the Free Press around a small Norfolk Island pine and across the small table.  Beth’s office was a warm and humid plant heaven, from the grape ivy dangling down beside Gail’s head to the fiddleleaf fig almost too large for its pot by the doorway.

“‘Monster Pack Assaults Fort Collins Diner, 5 Killed’,” Beth read.  “It sounds like a Hunter and his harem.  What’s the big deal?  This sort of thing happens all the time.”

“Yeah, that’s my point.  Hunter massacres happen all the time these days.  Consider what’s going on politically, with the Crows, Arms, and Focuses.”

Beth frowned.  “What do you see?”

“Trouble.  Back when I transformed Monsters never came in packs.  Now we’ve got Monster packs popping up all the time.”

“Well, that’s because of the Hunters.  Hunters run Monster packs.”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem.  We’ve got these Hunter-led Monster packs all over the place, at least west of the Mississippi, killing people whenever they damned well please, and no one can stop them. All the while the rest of us Major Transforms spend our time stabbing each other in the back, or preventing other Major Transforms, or the government, from stabbing
us
in the back.  Shouldn’t we be doing something about the Hunters?  Well, we’re not.  Let’s face it – the cops can hardly stop individual Monsters, and they can’t do a damned thing about Monster packs or Hunters. And let’s not mention the current Administration, which considers all Transform issues
politicized
, because of Senator McGovern’s stance on the issue, which somehow gives them an excuse to sneer at Monster depredations the same way they sneer at the UFO fanatics and the end-of-world placard guys.”

Beth finished off her cinnamon roll and licked her fingers. “You’re in one of your Doomsday moods again,” she said. “Monsters.  Phew!  That’s what the Arms are for.”

“Aren’t you forgetting the Arms are pissed at us Focuses?  I’ve heard Arm Hancock’s complaints on the subject, and unless the Focus community finds a way to make up for the way we behaved in the big Hunter fight last year, all we’re going to get from the Arms is a big ‘I told you so’ if we start screaming for help.”

Beth frowned and straightened the dieffenbachia on the low table by her knees.  It had wandered too close to the edge of the table. “Are you serious? You think there’s a problem here?”

Gail got up and paced restlessly over to the window, her long hair flowing behind her like a river.  She moved aside a curtain of philodendron vines and glanced outside at the blue sky, dotted with puffy white clouds.

“Uh huh.  The Transform community is falling apart, and because we are, nobody’s putting any effort into stopping the Hunters. The East Region Cause Focuses are getting exposed by some west coast Crow faction who think the Eskimo Spear is some sorta hoax.  The rest of the Crows have gone to ground in fear – I can’t even get Gilgamesh to meet with me personally any more, and he’s a Crow Guru now.”  He had met with Van, Sylvie and Kurt several times, and dropped off a copy of an Inferno-produced book called ‘household tag tuning’.  Gail had read the book twice and still didn’t understand the details, save that the process smelled of danger.  “The Arms are stuck in an organization-wide dominance contest, only you can’t even describe it that way to them without getting a huffy Arm in your face warning you to stay out of their personal business.”  Gail liked Arm Sibrian, well, socially.  When doing business, though, she was far too touchy to be enjoyable, and she was, objectively, more brutal than Teacher.  “And the Nobles?  Given how good they are at staying in the background I’d say they were just a rumor, save for the number of times I’ve met their representatives.”

“Oh, and let’s not forget our own Bitch Patrol,” Beth said.  “Nobody controls them and their nasty games, most especially not all our ignorant ordinary Focuses who think they’re participating in a democracy.”

“I’m not forgetting about them at all,” Gail said.  At least the local member of the Bitch Patrol, Focus Adkins, behaved.  Ever since Teacher claimed Detroit.

“Okay, I agree.  Everything is falling apart save for our little island of sanity in Detroit. What can
we
do? And if you tell me you’re going to pick fights with the Council, I’m going to call a psychiatrist.”

Gail leaned up against the wall and stared at the opposite wall, where Escher’s endless staircases ran round in infinite circles, framed in English ivy that needed watering.

“I’m not challenging the Council,” Gail said. “I beefed up my household defenses because I’m doing all this forbidden juice pattern training, and you would not believe what this crazy Arm-led training is doing to my ability to physically protect myself.  But even if the crazy insane secret project succeeds, it’s only a tiny step forward in the greater scheme of things.  I need, we need, to find a way to do more, a lot more.  Only I don’t know what else to do.”

“You really think the shit’s hitting the fan?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Beth shook her head. “You are being way too depressing. Let’s think about something positive for a while. Did I tell you that John got promoted over at the GM Plant? With that, I think we finally have enough coming in to get away from pro-burger completely. No more ‘soy filler product’. Only 100% real meat.”

Gail pulled her mind away from the bleak thoughts, grateful for Beth’s eternal good cheer.

“That’s wonderful news! Congratulations.”  Gail sighed.  “You should be glad you don’t have an Arm around to feed, though.  You wouldn’t believe what Arms eat these days.  I’ll give you a hint, though – the rawer, the better.  It’s almost as if…”

Gilgamesh appeared from nowhere, standing beside Beth.  “Gail.  Your household’s under attack.”  Gail, wide-eyed, found knives in her hand and her heart racing madly.  This time her flinch reaction had worked properly.  Even though she could see Gilgamesh, she couldn’t metasense him, making him a potential enemy.  “Beth, get a team together,” the Gilgamesh appearing entity said.  “We’ve got some people to calm down, and we could use your help.”

Beth moved without thinking, out the door and down the hall, barking orders and getting a bodyguard team together.  Gail walked slowly over to Gilgamesh, continuing to think paranoid self-defense thoughts.  “Is this really you?  What’s with the barking orders like someone with Arm charisma, anyway?”